Client

C

Clients, customers, call them what you will, without them no business is successful. We want to keep the current ones we have and we also want to attract new ones to help us grow our businesses. For some businesses this is a fairly easy process as they provide “essential” services, for others it is a complicated process as the services they provide are not essential. Either way we all need them and if we market ourselves properly we can have them calling us rather than us chasing them down.

L

Loyalty to your customer and from your customer. Some of the major supermarkets honed this skill of developing customer loyalty by issuing cards that accrue points over time to be given back in discount vouchers or special offers. This is perceived as a win/win situation, they remain loyal to you for remaining loyal to them. Ireland, until a few years ago, was known as a brand loyal country and because of this it was difficult for new brands to break into the market. The demise of the Celtic tiger put paid to that.

I

Interest. Develop and maintain a healthy interest in your clients. The best ever car salesman in the world had a Rolodex with all his clients details on it, including family member, their dates of birth, special upcoming events, as well as when they bought their cars from him. He sent out birthday cards to all customers and their family members, same at Christmas, weddings, funerals, births, etc as well as reminders of when their cars were due servicing. At the time he was spending an average of $200 per month and reaping the rewards of over $5,000 per month in extra commissions and bonuses. Ask any of his clients if he was interested in them and they stoutly replied that his interest and concern for their well being was genuine, because for him it was.

E

Engagement with your clients is another great way to keep them coming back. Many companies use social media as a means to stimulate their clients engagement today. However, there are just as many offline methods for doing this as there are online. Remember the film Charlie And The Chocolate Factory? It doesn’t have to be as elaborate as that, nor will that work for all types of business. Surveys are a really good way to engage your current and potential clients, competitions are another. There are lots of different ways, experiment and see what works for your business.

N

New clients. To maintain itself a business needs to retain the current clients at their current spending rates. To grow that business needs to attract new clients and develop them into current clients. To keep on growing it is simply a process of repeating the process. I constantly hear the phrase “people buy people” they don’t buy the product or service you provide and for some businesses that means employing others to be front of house for them because they don’t have the required skills or don’t like being at the coal face themselves.

T

Trust is huge. Your clients have got to know that they can trust you not to rip them off in the first place and that you will provide any necessary aftercare that might be required if they do business with you. So many businesses today only provide one form of aftercare due to cutbacks and rationalisations, however this costs many of them to lose their current clients. Just because technology has advanced in leaps and bounds does not mean that clients have, nor should they because you want them to. The best way to build trust with a client is to understand their needs and provide them for them – their way.

Mairéad Kelly developed the Cute Honey System - Business training, coaching & mentoring for Mumpreneurs & Mum Biz Owners who want to buzz their business into a hive of productivity while raising young children & often can’t get out to training events, morning or evening network events due to family commitments and/or a lack of finances.
http://www.cutehoney.ie

Add Your Comment

Hi Mairead, I’m really enjoying this series, you could/should do something special (contentwise) with these posts?

http://www.encouragingexcellence.ie/ Mairu00e9ad Kelly

Thanks Niall, I’ve a few ideas for them.

Anonymous

Nice post Maired. It was good to meet you in person and have a quick chat on Monday at the KLCK event. Your point on Interest caught my attention. I think we have more of an opportunity to learn about a client via Social Networks, in advance of meeting them, even if it only gives an opportunity to break the ice.

http://www.encouragingexcellence.ie/ Mairu00e9ad Kelly

Thanks Frank, it was great meeting you too. I think just about every person I met at KLCK I’ve met on Social Media first and then in person at a later date. We can learn a lot more these days about a person via Social Media than we could before, however, that been said I have nearly as many contacts that won’t touch Social Media and have absolutely no interest in it and they are getting on just fine without it, so for those people Social Media won’t help me learn about them, I have to maintain a physical interest, which is what they want.nnThere is a danger of spouting that Social Media is the only way forward, when for quite a sizeable part of the population it isn’t and it isn’t by choice – their’s. Like I said in the last part of the post, trust has to built up with a client their way, not mine.

Anonymous

Absolutely. I’ve found this in so many walks of life in the last few years. We sometimes assume that everyone is comfortable enough with the technology, but the fact is that there are so many people out there who don’t even have a computer at home never mind having a Facebook or Twitter account. For example I recently setup a Facebook Group for our residents’ association and out of 220 houses only 20 people joined the group.

http://www.ivanwalsh.com Ivan Walsh

Great series of articles, Mairead!

http://www.encouragingexcellence.ie/ Mairu00e9ad Kelly

Thanks Ivan.

http://www.bloggertone.com Niall Devitt

Hi Debbi, Thanks for explaining the differences, strengths and weaknesses of the different types of apps – this is a great reference post.

warrenrutherford

Wow – this was an extremely helpful post. Certainly not scannable:). Debbie I use these and never understood the logic behind them, so simply explained and understood (well almost) by a non-techie. Thanks so much.

Debi Harper

Phew:) glad it was helpful Warren and thank you for you kind comments, I am still a very nervous blogger.

Debi Harper

Thank you Niall

http://www.smartsolutions.ie/blog/ Elaine Rogers

Finally Debi!!! Thank you for taking the opportunity to educate those who are constantly or often thinking in terms of Apps.
On a lighter note, it always amuses me when I am in a training room and use the word APP (and we are working with MS Excel for example). 99% of attendees immediately think of their phone, and not the “application” that we have been working on and learning about) Always makes me smile.App is definitely associated with mobile devices, and we have to use Application or Program to differentiate the desktop version

Debi Harper

Thank you Elaine , so glad it was useful . It is amazing how quickly the word APP has become so widely related to mobile,especially the younger generation. I have to say and it is funny and a little scary that when I get asked in our local town what we do,I totally confuse people:) I now tend to now say we work with computers and phones.

http://TheMarketingShop.ie/ Debbie McDonnell

Great post Debi, thanks for sharing it as this is something that confuses so many people. Going forward I’ll be able to share your post so people can decide what they’re really looking for.

http://roojoom.com/ Yael Kochman

Great suggestions. You should also check out commercescience.com – great tool to present personalized offers that change in real time according to users behavior.

http://4-Tell.com Wendi Makuch

Great list! I’d love to see 4-Tell.com’s personalized product recommendations added – it’s a great way to increase conversion and sales too. Leverage the aggregate and individual shopping behavior in real-time to suggest different items to each of your shoppers. Bonus – the same great recommendations can be easily dropped into any email system, including MailChimp!

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